Empty Man - Saving the world every 30 minutes since 1952.

• Max

2 Seconds Later - Ultra Tiger - Existential Nothingness

I’m floating in a void of nothingness. It’s the same virtual space where the Guild meets, but instead of a fantasy setting, there’s nothing here. Except Maximum. He looks just like Max, except instead of eyes, he has holes to more nothing.

“Think you can guess the future?” he asks.

“Sure. I’ll give it a go.” I answer.

I haven’t seen Felicia since the battle of the ruined games night, but my daughter told me about Copycat, Zonk, and Empty Man. Probably. I’m guessing she left some stuff out, but I have a general idea of what’s going on.

“You want to initiate a mind control event.”

He nods.

“You need my help.”

He makes a so-so gesture. “More want than need. We have other options.”

“Fair enough. One question - What the hell, man!”

“I might ask the same.” he sighs. “Listen, it’s not complicated. Do you know what a cobalt bomb is?”

“Refresh me.”

“It’s the original doomsday device. A nuke wrapped in cobalt. Designed to salt the entire planet with radioactive fallout. Theorized in 1950, it’s cheap, easy to build, and capable of wiping out all life on earth. Doesn’t need a rocket, submarine, or bomber. Doesn’t need a miniaturized warhead, or enriched material. Just slap it together in your backyard and set it off. Game over.

“The cobalt bomb was a thought experiment. It was never built, and may not have worked. But by 1952, we had enough nukes to kill us all the hard way. Mass starvation by nuclear winter.

“It was easy to see the future. More and more doomsday devices. Each cheaper and simpler than the last. We’d fill the world with them. Edging Armageddon. Until someone slips. Or has nothing left to lose. Ka-boom.

“So we gathered the world powers, and did a deal. No more wars. Everybody keeps their own borders, their own people. Inside that, you can do whatever you want. Rob, rape, murder. Anything goes. Step over the border and we end you.” Maximum shrugs. “It’s not pretty, but it works. More or less.”

“The Empty Peace.” I say.

“Yeah.” says Maximum. “I guess so.”

“It sucks balls.”

“Does it? For the last 70 years the world's great powers have been at peace. It’s the first time that’s happened since the 1500’s. In that time, life has gotten much better. The world literacy rate has doubled, global life expectancy has gone up by 26 years, and three billion more people live in democracies.

“Stopping the wars between the great powers didn’t directly do any of that, but it set the stage. Kinda hard to teach your daughter to read when the neighbors are shooting at you.

“Also, we’re all still alive. Not bad for a bunch of monkeys that could cook the Earth in 30 minutes or less.”

“But it’s not working anymore.”

“No, it’s not.” agrees Max. “Fucking internet. Turns out information was the real superweapon all along. Giving people exponential amounts of info has made them exponentially more dangerous. Now we have small groups of fanatics punching like medium sized countries. It’s destabilizing.”

“Or, things are unstable because your new world order left a lot of people behind.” I snap. “Ya don’t think inequality, injustice, and global warming are destabilizing forces?”

“Nope. That’s just reality. Stability is more of an emotional thing. If you think you’re getting a raw deal, you fight the system. If you think you’re getting an okay deal, you support the system. And changing people’s thinking is way easier than changing the system.”

“And that’s what you need me for.”

“Yes. People have split into two groups. Two completely different realities, where each thinks they’re the victim of the other. Both think they’re losing the battle for the future and hate the other side for beating them. This hate is spiraling out of control, bringing us ever closer to violence, war, and doomsday.”

“And what?” I scoff. “You want me to end the hate? Make these guys like each other?”

“Nah, we don’t give a fuck if they hate each other. It’s the loser mentality that’s the problem. We want you to flip the script. Use the symbionts to make each side think it’s winning. Conclusively. Really sticking it to the other guy. Make them fat, happy, and complacent. Put them back to sleep.”

“How the fuck do I do that?”

“I dunno, how’d you do it with the Guild?”

“...what?”

“The Guild. You took society's worst agitators, and turned them into lazy, drugged out, horn dogs. Completely smothered their fire for change with pot and pussy.” Max frowns. “With a few notable exceptions. But we can help you with Copycat.”

I shake my head. “The Guild was about making people’s lives better.”

“Yeah, and that’s what they think happened!” gushes Max. “I mean, it didn’t happen. Not really. The Guild was fighting inequality, till you convinced them that having nothing was the solution, somehow. Now you just gotta convince the great powers that they can also win by losing, or whatever. Then we get everything - because you convinced everyone else they won by doing nothing! Win-win-win. Everybody's happy."

Max beams at me.

I shake my head. “And I gotta do it or you Zonk the drinking water.”

“Well, the bottled water. It’s not cost effective to run custom drug molecules through people’s toilets.”

“Not Zonking the soda pop?”

“Refined sugar is already a complacency agent. It's working fine on its own.”

I clutch my brow. “Jesus fucks, Max. How did you get involved in Zonking people?”

“Hey, I was never for Operation Zonk. Aside from the gross factor, it’s a money pit. We spent a fortune and it’s already gone to shit. Your way actually made us money, and is much more resilient. But I got outvoted, so we tried Zonk first. Empty Man is a democracy.” Max shrugs. ”Maybe the only one.”

I slump down.

"You're distressed." Max nods. "I get it. The truth is terrible. You tried to fix the world, and just made it worse. Trust me bud, I’ve been there. But we can salvage something from this clusterfuck - maybe buy ourselves a few more years of world peace. That’s not nothing. Hell, as failures go, this one’s pretty awesome. You’ve fucked up gooder than most people succeed. Or, you will have, after you’ve helped us.”

“Great. Then we can all go back to watching the Office in our underwear until global warming kills us all.”

“Fuck. Again with the global warming.” groans Maximum. “We buy time by the minute. Who fucking cares if we all die in a hundred years? Anyway, we can fix it whenever we want. We just haven’t because armies desperately need oil. If they can’t scoot around in their little machines, how do they keep people in line? You don’t wanna see the kind of armies you get in a world without oil. It’s just spies and doomsday machines.”

I’ve heard enough. This guy is a maniac. I start to back away. “You’re a maniac, Max. You can’t see the future. This is all crazy pre-emptive atrocity bullshit.”

“Umm...” interupts Ultra. “You probably won’t want to hear this, but a squadron of little green octopi just stole a couple tons of uranium from a nuclear power plant in Jersey.”

I clutch my brow.

“Also, the containment facility where the last sample of smallpox is kept has been robbed.” Ultra says with a wince. “Probably by Rapture.”

Max shakes his head. “See what I have to deal with? It’s like this all day.”

I rub my head. Godammit.

“Alright, fine. You want a mind control event? Let’s do it.”